


Five Things

by femmenoire



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmenoire/pseuds/femmenoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Justin and Erin never got to do...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.

She ordered a glass of red wine before she realized what she was doing. 

When she was a rookie, she’d been (not-so-kindly) informed that she should order a pint like all the other blokes. “Best not to call attention to the fact that you’re... you know... a lass,” the Gov had said.

Erin knew he was a sexist pig but she also knew that she was one of only three women to enter the services and she also knew that she’d wanted to be a copper since she was young. So she figured that complaining about her drinks at the pub after a long and trying shift was ridiculous. 

But today she was too tired and it was just Justin Ripley after all, she thought. And then she remembered that this was the same man she thought was a harmless puppy who’d all but ruined her career, making anti-corruption the only unit likely to accept her and her spine stiffened. She was just about to raise her hand to cancel the glass of wine, when the bartender placed the dainty glass in front of her.

“Here you go, love.”

Erin forced a warm smile on her face and handed over her fiver. “Cheers.” 

She sipped the first glass, but practically gulped the second. Her mind was racing. Had she made a mistake? Had he decided not to come? Had he talked to Luther? Had he just been deceiving her? Like last time...

She called him twice; his mobile went to voicemail directly each time. She refused to call again. She would’t chase him. 

She ordered another glass of wine. 

Just as the bartender pulled the bill from her fingers with sympathetic eyes that Erin avoided, her phone chirped. She took a quick gulp of wine, for courage, and pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. 

It was Stark.


	2. 2.

It was the morphine. 

Her surgeon said it could affect her dreams. A potential side effect. But she was expecting talking cartoon bears. Not him. 

“What were you hoping for? In your heart of hearts?”

She could still hear his voice, soft but oddly deep. 

What had she expected? 

The dream was like a collage. Of him. And her. 

Each time they’d almost touched. Every glance. All the pain and hurt. 

But it was other things. Sometimes they touched. Sometimes he held her gaze longer than was appropriate. Sometimes they were happy. 

His voice warm against her ear. “You’re better than this.”

She wanted to scream. She wanted to crawl under her covers. With him. And hide from the world.

“So are you,” she mumbled in her drug-induced sleep. 

She was always confused at first. About what was real and what was imaginary.

But then things were calm, soft. They were on the beach; Brighton probably. She was in a summer dress. He was in a pair of khakis. Light colors. 

That was usually what tipped her brain off that something wasn’t right. 

“Erin.” The way he said her name. 

Thankfully she wasn’t conscious enough to hear the guttural sounds she made. 

“Erin.”

“Justin,” she dreamed she said. She mumbled unconsciously. Her voice was oddly calm. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

“No, I’m sorry,” she replied. 

It was a good thing she was drugged. She’d never have been able to stop the crying. And he wasn’t around to hold her. Like he would have done. 

Like she dreamt he would have done.


	3. 3.

She wasn’t quite fit to run. 

Technically she wasn’t fit for much these days. She couldn’t lift much more than her purse, which her sister patently refused to allow. She couldn’t drive; something to do with the side effects of all the pain killers she was taking. She was even having a problem concentrating. Her surgeon thought that was also a side effect of the medication but he referred her to a “counselor” just in case. 

Erin thought about protesting, but since the Met would make her see a therapist before she could get back on regular duty anyway, she hoped to kill two birds with one stone. 

But full duty felt like a million years away sometimes. Erin’s days mostly consisted of conversations with her sister where she grunted and nodded in response to boring stories about her nephew’s football matches; non-conversations with her mother over home-cooked meals that made her feel all of twelve again; and long showers where she cried as softly as possible. 

After a few weeks she could walk at a brisk pace. Well brisk for her. It’s surprising what a bullet does to the body. 

Erin got winded often. She’d had to stop twice within a mile the first time she ventured out on her own. She’d insisted on the privacy, even though it terrified her mother and sister. They’d only agreed to let her out by herself if she agreed to call periodically. She took her breaks on benches (overlooking the halal butcher and community book shop) and chatted with her sister (while her mom hovered nearby, she was sure). 

But after a while she could walk and talk and it felt glorious. 

Oh how the mighty have fallen, she thought, but in his voice. She stopped dead in her tracks. 

For a few seconds all she could hear was the sound of her own hard breathing and the steady pulse of her blood rushing to her heart. And she thought she was ok. 

Erin. 

The sun was high in the sky but it was still a bit chilly. This was England after all. 

She wanted to run. 

She knew the beating of her legs, her muscles working, her breathing regulated, would all drown out his voice. But she could feel her incision, as fresh as if her surgery was just yesterday and knew she’d never make it.

Erin. 

It was his voice, but not his. 

Erin. 

“Oh,” she said out loud. “Luther.”

Erin.

She spun around, her name loud in her ears as if he were right beside her. But when she turned he wasn’t there. 

Why was she hearing his voice? Why his? Of all people’s?

“No,” she said, to the empty street behind her and took off, as quick as her strong legs and temporarily weakened body would allow. “No.”

She could see home in the distance. Just a minute more. Suddenly she was wishing for the warmth of her kitchen, full of the smells of her mother’s cooking and her sister’s incessant chatter. All the better to drown out their voices. 

All the better to forget.


	4. 4.

It was light duty. Paperwork. 

A lot of filing. A lot of coordinating schedules and crossing other people’s t’s; dotting their i’s. 

A lot of time to think. The exact opposite of what she wanted. 

But almost no supervision. And that was great. 

Not because Erin didn’t like authority. The opposite. She respected it. She cherished it. Even though trying to protect it, and the integrity of being a copper, had derailed her career. 

But these days she wasn’t DCI Gray. She was just the bitch who got DSU Stark murdered and tried to stitch up DCI Luther. 

She wasn’t shocked that people had already dug her grave (she was black and a woman after all). She’d always been expecting this to be honest. 

She was just surprised at how lonely she felt. 

The only good thing about her current situation was that she could listen to music. She could put on her headphones and escape from her life with the lovers rock mix her mother had made (her first playlist ever). She liked to turn the volume all the way up. Loud enough to drown out her thoughts. So she didn’t have to worry about accidentally hearing any strange voices in her head. It was just Erin and Janet Kay and the subtle sway of her hips. 

That was how Schenk found her. An errant file on a suspicious arson in Ealing in her right hand and her left hand in the air as her hips swayed from right to left to a beat he couldn’t hear. 

And she couldn’t hear him. So he waited. Until... well he assumed until the song ended and she opened her eyes. He made sure that he was looking above her head, nowhere near her... well nowhere untoward. 

She ripped her headphones from her head. “Sir,” she said breathlessly. Schenk wondered how long she’d been dancing; how long since her surgery. 

“Gray,” he said dispassionately. 

Her eyes dropped to the ground. “Is there... Is there something... Some file I can get for you?”

“Ripley...”

Her eyes rose quickly to meet his. 

“...Luther.”

She took several breaths before she felt in control of her voice. 

“Sir?”

He couldn’t stop the small smile from forming at her response. The pain. The regret. The anger. 

“He said you were a good copper.”


	5. 5.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin heads North to meet Justin's family. Finally.

The sound of steel slamming against steel lulled her to sleep. 

She’d never been up North. Like most Londoners she could only understand the world in relation to the few blocks, bordered by the few tube stops and bus routes, that demarcated her home. Surprisingly her time as a copper had only ever expanded her reach by a few kilometers. 

But there was the world and then there was the North. She could understand Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and India. But Liverpool? It might as well have been an entirely new planet; certainly a different country. 

Erin awoke with a start. 

She gathered her belongings and rushed off of the train at Crewe. 

Erin had just over an hour before her next train arrived. She bought a tea and a pasty before she moved to the right platform. She just taken a bite when he arrived.

He sat on the bench next to her, just far enough away that she would have to leap at him. If she’d wanted to. 

But she didn’t. She didn’t want this trip to be about vengeance. She didn’t want to blame him anymore. Or at least she didn’t want to blame him anymore than she blamed any other copper on the Met. And never more than she blamed herself. 

“I didn’t expect to see you this early,” she said, blowing on her tea before taking a sip. She still burned her tongue. 

“I got on the train at Milton Keynes,” he said. 

“Hmmm,” she mumbled around a bite of her pasty. 

“Schenk said I shouldn’t ask where you’re staying.”

“Do you even care?” His voice was matter-of-fact. No judgement. Erin considered his words and was unsurprised to find the answer. 

“Not in the least,” she replied. She finished her pasty. She sipped her tea until it cooled. 

When their train arrived they stood side-by-side at the platform’s edge.

She saw their reflection in the train doors before they opened. 

Some long atrophied part of her heart wished that she could have conjured his image between them. As he’d been in life.   
But it had been years since he was murdered. And, as much as she hated to admit it to herself, some days she could hardly remember what he looked like, let alone the sound of his voice. 

“He loved you,” John said. 

Erin could feel the pressure of tears behind her eyes. 

Once this train reached Liverpool she would cry. She would sit in his parents’ sitting room, look at naked baby pictures of him and hear his mum’s favorite stories about her son who’d always wanted to be a copper. And she would cry. And then she would stand in front of his grave and cry one last time, deep guttural sobs, mourning the life they could have had. 

But not right now. 

Right now, on a platform somewhere in Cheshire she’d never be able to find on a map, she was standing next to John Luther and she felt the need to be honest. 

“Not as much as he loved you, unfortunately.”


End file.
